Telugu second-most popular language among non-native English speakers in US: Survey

Washington D.C. [USA]: A survey has revealed that in the United States, Telugu is the most widely spoken language at home after Haitian among people whose first language is not English.

The United States Census Bureau, in its five-year estimates (2012-2016), has found that 3,21,695 people, between the age of five and older, speak Telugu and 280,867 speak Punjabi at home while Bengali and Tamil speakers number 2,59,204 and 2,38,699 respectively.

The report titled 2012-2016 American Community Survey, which was released on Thursday, also revealed that 48 percent of Punjabi speakers are mostly concentrated in California while 38.6 percent of Bengali speakers lived in New York.

While for both Telugu and Tamil languages, the highest concentration of speakers lived in California, followed by Texas and New Jersey (the number of persons who spoke Tamil in Texas and New Jersey are not statistically different).

The findings also showed that between 2012 and 2016, 21.1 percent (63,172,059) of the population age five and older spoke a language other than English at home, an increase from 20.3 percent in the 2007-2011

The survey features more than 40 social, economic, housing and demographic topics, including homeowner rates and costs, health insurance and educational attainment.

"The American Community Survey allows us to track incremental changes across our nation on how people live and work, year-to-year," said David Waddington, chief of the Social, Economic and Housing Statistics Division.

"It's our country's only source of small area estimates for socio-economic and demographic characteristics. These estimates help people, businesses and governments throughout the country better understand the needs of their populations, the markets in which they operate and the challenges and opportunities they face," Waddington added.

The survey produces statistics for all of the nation's 3,142 counties.